[jdrc]

Hotter take: men don't want long-term partners period, monogamy is social conditioning because it leads to stable and more successful settlements.

[hhjinks]

If we reframe this into societal terms, so that this doesn't get dragged into a "not all men want that" argument, why is it that most modern societies had/has rigid, monogamous family units? There are stereotypes for both promiscuous men and women, and clearly there's some degree of promiscuity in both genders. But the (vast?) majority of societies also adopted monogamous family units for most social classes. If men and women are promiscuous by nature, which forces led to the family unit in modern societies? Or perhaps that's just an illusion? How common was it to have a paramour anyway?

[ZephyrBlu]

1) Societal stability

2) Most men are not capable of being promiscuous, even if they want to be

[jdrc]

obviously nonmonogamous communities did not survive so what we see may be survivor bias. Nowadays however it IS becoming possible for nonmonogamous socieites to survive due to our superior technology. Hopefully there will be better studies out there than my office-chair evopsych.

[fxtentacle]

monogamy != long-term partnership

Genghis Khan had 6 long-term wives. Most likely, the women were forced to be monogamous, while he obviously wasn't.

[KronisLV]

Wouldn't that mean that "mate guarding" behaviors would have to be assumed to be wholly due to social conditioning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_guarding_in_humans

Don't some behaviors like that also happen amongst other mammals or other animals in general?

[bell-cot]

Ah... On the "men...want..." part, are you interested in what actual individual human men really want? Or just in a very simplistic, macho stereotype - which few men are likely to voice disagreement with, when it is repeatedly and forcefully voiced, in the context of a society where men often face harsh punishments (social and/or physical) for having non-conformist feeling on subjects like sex. And generally worse if they actually try to voice those feelings.

[numerik_meister]

I guess I'm a martian then.

[tgv]

Then you define "want" in a very narrow sense, and there definitely is no evidence to show that it's "social condtioniting", nor that it's a desire shared by (nearly) all men.